Friday, February 17, 2012

Faust

F.W. Murnau's Faust was his final German film before the director emigrated to the USA for his all-too-brief career in Hollywood. This grand, extravagant epic, based on Goethe's version of the German legend about a man making a deal with the devil, represented Murnau's everything-and-the-kitchen-sink apotheosis of the German Expressionist silent style. It's a technical marvel, with dazzling effects that must have been utterly cutting edge at the time and today still have tremendous charm and power. This is especially true of the film's opening section, in which the devil makes a wager with an archangel over the soul of Faust (Gösta Ekman), a good man who the devil, in an echo of the Biblical story of Job, promises he can corrupt. Faust is a man of great faith and wisdom, old and wise and well-respected in his community. But he is nevertheless corrupted by the devil's representative Mephisto (Emil Jannings, in a scenery-devouring role), first by appealing to his very best instincts, his desire to help people, then by tempting him with power, then with increasingly base and material temptations.

The film's opening section provides Murnau with the opportunity to unleash a barrage of visual effects, showing the devil towering over a scale-model town, stretching his black wings to blot out the sun, kicking up clouds of dust that spread the plague. Sinister skeletal riders soar through the sky, and the devil's face appears floating in the clouds, taunting the people of the town. Faust, faced with this plague, appeals to both science and God, but both fail him; he can do nothing to cure the disease, and in a fit of desperation, after burning both his religious and his scholarly books, he decides to summon a demonic force to his aid instead. He goes to the crossroads, that mythic site of hellish bargaining, and as he conducts the ritual, Murnau draws a glowing ring of fire around him, fiery circles hovering hazily in the air around Faust, as the demon Mephisto magically materializes by his side.

Mephisto appears first as a ratty, stooped beggar with sinisterly glowing eyes, haunting the terrified Faust, who already regrets summoning this creepy creature, and later as a courtly, vampiric figure in black robes and a jaunty cap with a feather sticking out of it. In either guise, he's a mischievous trickster guiding Faust into the bargain that will doom him. Faust believes at first that he's only doing this to help people, but he's soon seduced by sensual and sexual pleasures, by the lure of power and greed and lust. The film calms down a little stylistically after this initial flurry of baroque visual overload, and when Mephisto transforms Faust into a young man — in order to pursue first a libertine duchess (Hanna Ralph) and then the virginal young Gretchen (Camilla Horn) — the film settles down into a much more understated melodrama, albeit one that takes place amidst the deformed architecture and spiky shadows of the elaborately designed sets.

Faust's romance with Gretchen is what ultimately saves him — the film ends with an angel defeating the devil, citing the power of love, liebe, and the word appears surrounded with a glistening halo of light — but Murnau is somewhat irreverent in his depiction of this tragic romance. Part of it is that Jannings' Mephisto is just so much more appealing and fun to watch than the smooth-faced, feminine young Faust, who's very much cast in the mold of the usual bland silent-era heroes despite his deal with the devil.

Mephisto is the choice part here — although Gretchen's leering giant of a brother (William Dieterle) somewhat unintentionally gives Mephisto a run for his money as the creepiest character in the film. Mephisto is an incarnation of the devil as an avatar of fun, dancing around in the shadows making mischief, mugging wildly for the camera in his agony at the sight of a cross, stalking around with his rapier sticking out the back of his robes like a stiff tail. The film, despite its ultimate message of love and spiritual uplift, has some pretty perverse and provocative ideas about good and evil, confirming the impression that the latter have all the fun.

In one early scene, the plague inspires an apocalyptic preacher who urges the people to repent and pray, the cross he holds looming large within the frame. But this somber, morbid religious assembly is interrupted by a parade of revelers who take the opposite approach, laughing at death and celebrating feverishly since life is so short. There's no question which approach Murnau makes seem more appealing, as the partying villagers briefly stop beneath the preacher, the camera angled down to leer at the women with their cleavage spilling out of their tops, laughing and drinking, their sensuality splayed out beneath the preacher with his cross. To cap off this scene, the devil strikes down the preacher, suggesting that goodness and piety are no guarantees in a world where Hell has as much influence as Heaven.

Mephisto is the most visible embodiment of this sensibility. Jannings, an actor who knew very well how to play big without sacrificing subtlety, rips into the part but never comes across as hammy, instead just communicating this sinister devil's delight in his evil deeds, his pop-eyed intensity and insanity. His best showcase is Mephisto's playful flirtation with Gretchen's matronly alchemist aunt Marthe (Yvette Guilbert), which serves as a parodic counterpoint to the love scenes between Gretchen and Faust. Gretchen plays the "he loves me, he loves me not" game with a flower she picks, and Mephisto repeats the gesture with eye-rolling mockery using a mushroom, sticking shards of it in his mouth as he pulls them off the crown.

Murnau cuts back and forth between these two romances throughout this scene, employing the comic, ribald interplay of the demon and the alchemist as a tonic for the conventionally romantic pursuit of Gretchen by Faust. Mephisto is both randier than the human — putting a necklace on the old woman, he cups her breasts in his hands, then recoils as though disappointed in what he'd felt — and much funnier, as he responds to his paramour's attempts to kiss him by pushing her cap over her face and running away. The whole sequence ends, not with Faust proposing to Gretchen, but with Marthe lovingly taking a piece of mushroom and stuffing it into her shirt as a souvenir, while Mephisto, fleeing the scene, turns back towards the camera, and spits out a mouthful of chewed-up mushroom bits, blowing a raspberry at all this romance and sentimentality.

Though Jannings is the film's most powerful presence and easily steals every scene he's in, Murnau masterfully shifts the film's focus and its sympathies to Gretchen for the increasingly poignant final act, in which the young girl suffers greatly for her involvement with the corrupt Faust. Horn delivers a sweet, pure performance, radiating light and decency, and Murnau draws visual parallels between the girl and both the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc in the film's final stretch. The image of Gretchen in the snow, a shawl wrapped around her head, the tears on her cheeks frozen into delicate white crystalline patterns, is breathtaking and heartbreaking, a tragically beautiful evocation of the Virgin with child. The film, like many of the Faust legends upon which it's based, Goethe's included, pulls back from the darkness at the very last second. But this momentary redemption, as affecting as it is, is in many ways overpowered by Murnau's far more vivid presentation of suffering, corruption, shadow and fog, and the sheer grinning, mischievous fun that is the evil in the world.

10 comments:

Sam Juliano
said...

With a recent discussion on the cinema of 1926 at hand and a staging of Gounoud's operatic masterpiece FAUST at the Metropolitan Opera that was boaodcast worldwide on simulcast, I'd say this remarkable review of Murnau's expressionistic gem is timely, but also a significant addition to the literature of the director's last German film. Even in a career that includes some of the greatest films ever made (SUNRISE, THE LAST LAUGH, NOSFERATU) this audacious work has earned the admiration of those who prefer this side of the director's creativity. Certainly, as you note, the opening sequence is one of the most startling in all of cinema with the camera swirling in baroque mode. It could well be argued with some persuasiveness that Margurite is insipid and Faust himself too effeminate, and the Princess's ball is like a German music hall in the 20's, but these issues are easily avalanched by the presence and work of the great Jannings, and a definitive incarnation of the expressionist style that Murnau never allowed to flourish quite the same way in his subsequent work, even with the obvious indeptedness of his later American work.

I was certainly inspired by that discussion to write this one up. For me, Faust and The Last Laugh are the greatest out of those four Murnau classics, but of course that's just subjective. This film is bursting with style and has a great performance in Jannings, though I'd say that Horn's Gretchen is also admirable, especially towards the end of the film during the sequences when Murnau parallels her to the Virgin Mary. Can't argue with you that Faust himself is effeminate, but I wouldn't say that his blandness detracts from the film, it just leaves more space for Jannings to devour the scenery around him.

"the Princess's ball is like a German music hall in the 20's"

And that is anything but a weakness, that scene is sublime and ridiculous with all the dancing girls and elephants, somewhere between a music hall and a Middle Eastern harem.

Faust is Murnau's masterpiece. Several years back Bill Krohn and I did the commentary track for the "EUREKA! Masters of Cinema" DVD -- aBritish Region 2 release. We discuss the film as a whole and zero in on specific images that were slavishly copied by Disney for Fantasia and Welles for Citizen Kane

Yeah, it's a fantastic and extremely influential film, David. I don't have the MOC disc but I'd like to get it, since I imagine, as is usually the case with that company, it's the best version of the film. That Rohmer book sounds great, a shame I don't read French, and that more of his criticism hasn't been translated into English. From what I've read by him, he was a very insightful critic.

Faust is my favorite Murnau too. I saw it years ago for the first time at the Anthology Film Archives in New York, back-to-back with The Last Laugh. I found out after I bought my ticket that both were to be screened without any music and even considered leaving before sucking it up and sitting down. Well, I was spellbound for 4 hours (or however long it took) - and since then have generally preferred to watch silents without music. The visuals were spellbinding.

I love the richness and playfulness of the film, that kitchen sink quality it shares with Sunrise - both are models of the "wandering narratives" which I find to be one of the most engaging storytelling styles. I've heard people criticize the middle section, with its dual romances, but I found this to be one of the most charming sequences in the movie.

I saw this without music, too, I've gotten into the habit of muting my TV for silents because it's so rare that I actually care much for the music accompanying silent films on DVD. Too often I find the music distracting from the visuals when the music was added to the film later.

Agreed about the "wandering narrative" quality of the film, I love that it's so difficult to predict where it will end up from one scene to the next. The stylistic diversity adds to that sensation, since one moment the Devil's towering across the screen, and the next it's a much more grounded melodrama.

Ed, I saw this film yesterday and really appreciated reading your review straight afterwards. I had not picked up on the wager over the soul being an echo of Job - very interesting. As you say, the special effects are astonishing and Emil Jannings has a wonderful time as Mephisto. I really like your point about the way in which his flirtation with the aunt mockingly counterpoints Faust and Gretchen - it indeed brings out the sexual threat underlying the apparent sweetness of the young couple's courtship.

Magnificent though the whole plague opening is, I feel there is something jarring in the way that in this version of the tale Faust moves from heroically risking his soul to save others from plague to pursuing pleasure. To me the change is rather abrupt. Still, as he changes from the older to younger man at this point, I don't think the disjunction is really much of a worry while watching the film.

I think the most powerful part of the film might be the scene where Gretchen is thrown out in the snow with her baby. I was impressed by the speed with which Murnau moves from snow as part of the cosy Christmas celebration to the blizzard showing the cold hearts of the "good" townspeople who turn their backs on Gretchen. I wasn't sure if Gretchen was redeemed at the end in this version - I suppose that as Faust is, she must be too? Goethe's original version of Faust saw her condemned, with the line "Sie ist gerichtet" (she is judged) but later he changed the line to "Sie ist gerettet" (she is saved).

Thanks, Judy. I can see what you mean about the change in Faust's character being rather abrupt early in the film, but I think it's making the point that the desire for power, even in service of good intentions, all too easily leads to corruption. Faust just wants to help people at first, but once he gets a taste of what Mephisto can give him, he wants more, and he's easily led into baser pursuits.

Agreed that the scenes with Gretchen in the snow are really moving. I'm guessing Renoir drew on that sequence for his equally heartbreaking The Little Match Girl.

Hello, Ed. I stumbled upon your blog while doing a search for Mephisto, a much later German film. Now I'm intrigued enough to watch Murnau's Faust which I was happy to find on Netflix. Since they have the streaming version, I'll be able to watch it tonight.

By the way, have you ever seen Jan Svankmajer's Faust? I have this for sale at my online video store sasquatchvideo.net It's a very well done mix of live action and claymation. Definitely worth a look.

At any rate, thank you for your insightful review and to your subscribers for their intelligent comments regarding Murnau's Faust. I'm going to make some popcorn now and get to watching it. Someone suggested it was better to turn off the sound, so that's what I'll do.

The Conversations

The Conversations is a monthly series in which Jason Bellamy and I discuss a wide range of cinematic subjects, from critical analyses of particular films to comprehensive filmmaker overviews. Each discussion is published at The House Next Door.